


Glorious Ruin

by rosweldrmr



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Hunger Games (Movies), Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gathering Astrofrost, Lokane Fanwork Exchange 2013, Pre-Hunger Games, Thor/Hunger Games mashup, lokane - Freeform, magic n science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 16:36:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1134967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosweldrmr/pseuds/rosweldrmr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no glory in the Hunger Games. No honor, no splendor, no prestige capable of masking the horrors of children killing children. There is only the yoke of the Capitol and the glorious ruin of hope. </p><p>But Loki is ignorant of this the day his name is plucked from the glass bowl of District 1. Blinded by ambition, by the suffocating compulsion to <i>prove</i> himself, Loki greets misfortune as an old lover, tender and wistful in his innocence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glorious Ruin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LMPandora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMPandora/gifts).



 

“The dead bodies of men will lie like refuse on the open field, like cut grain behind the reaper, with no one to gather them.” - Jeremiah 9:22

\--

There is no glory in the Hunger Games. No honor, no splendor, no prestige capable of masking the horrors of children killing children. There is only the yoke of the Capitol and the glorious ruin of hope.

But Loki is ignorant of this the day his name is plucked from the glass bowl of District 1. Blinded by ambition, by the suffocating compulsion to _prove_ himself, Loki greets misfortune as an old lover, tender and wistful in his innocence.

\--

The morning of The Reaping dawns bright and cold in early spring. The bitter frost of winter still clings to the fading night, distraught and frenzied when faced with its own mortality.

Loki dresses unhurriedly in his best black slacks, softest white button-up shirt, and new charcoal waistcoat his mother gifted him last week; an early present for his eighteenth birthday in a few days. His hair has grown long since the last reaping. It curls around his ears and turns up where his neck meets his back. He knows his mother favors it this length, as she has often said so - usually in his defense when his brothers or father scorn him.

Curiously, it's his hair he thinks of as he walks through the parted crowd. The black strands cut short by some painted stylist in the Capitol. His mother would be so disappointed.

Loki hears nothing past the call of his name. Not the tall, dark-skinned escort congratulating him, not Thor's pained 'brother' as he reaches for him, finding nothing but the empty space Loki left behind. He doesn’t hear the gasp from just offstage where his mother clutches her chest and mouths ‘No’. He doesn’t hear an old man in the back of the crowd murmur ‘even the mayor’s son isn’t safe’.

In those weightless moments as he ascends and all eyes in Panem are on him, all Loki sees or hears is the delicate slip of parchment as it flutters in the unusually cool breeze, caught between the fingers of the towering Capitol Escort, Heimdall.

He stands tall and proud as he takes his place onstage. He knows his brothers’ shadows cannot reach him here. His father’s approval hangs like a drop of dew caught in the early morning sun, shimmering and fleeting in the heat of the day. The promise of it eats at him. It taunts him, like the whispers that trail in his wake.

‘Traitor,’ they hiss.

But he can't hear them now. Now, all he hears is a silence unlike any other, thick with admiration, with _respect_.

His ego makes him younger than he is, foolish and petulant. No more than a child, unprepared for the barbarics of the arena - though he doesn’t know that yet. He has no way of knowing what these games will become: a stain on history, a dark shadow in the face of a nation separated by electrified fences, segregated by class, and paralyzed by fear. They are a heinous thing, subversive and crippling in their oppression.

Now, he clings to the prospect of recognition, to a dignity that only being a victor will afford him. Being selected from the lottery is a fortuitous thing, a chance he knows he would never receive otherwise. He would never have been selected as a volunteer; the complicated rules of District 1 typically rely more on the ranking from the academy than anything. And for a district that prizes physical strength above all else, Loki has never been a contender.

But Loki knows there is more than one way to win. He has seen the mistakes of the past, the over-reliance on brute force alone. No intelligence, lacking all refinement and cleverness, in which Loki excels. This is the legacy of his mother.

Where others looked and saw physical inferiority, Frigga saw the capacity for greatness. Not in muscles or strength, but in the mastery of subtlety and intelligence. She taught Loki there were more ways to fight than with fists and swords. She taught him about people, how to read them, how to manipulate them.

He wants this chance to show her, show all of Panem, that you don’t need to be the biggest, or the toughest. You don’t need to be the mayor’s biological son, you can have traitor parents that were executed on live TV after the uprising, you can have slender bones and a lithe frame, and as long as you have a strategy and cunning, you can be a victor.

“What an eager tribute,” the announcers will say later in their recaps at the sly, possessive smile that creeps over Loki’s face.

“Sif,” Heimdall announces, after the female ‘volunteer’ has been selected. And the pale, frightened girl whose name Loki can’t even remember and whose face he’s never noticed before her name was pulled from the glass bowl all but leaps from the stage, back into the crowd, lost in a sea of equally frightened faces.

Loki’s smirk falters, only slightly. He knows Sif. He’s seen her grow up, knows how her body moves, what she sounds like when she moans into the dark. He’s intimately familiar with her.

This will mean her end.

“I refuse a volunteer on my behalf,” Loki says, his voice steady. Heimdall’s eyes swivel in their sockets, too large and unnaturally orange.

People in the crowd mutter ‘can he do that?’ and ‘no one’s ever refused’. The Capitol delegation and his father speak in low tones, discussing fervently. Odin’s eyes seek his, only for a moment, but Loki can read the intent clearly.

Disappointment.

It is a look Loki is all too familiar with. He feels it in his bones, knows the weight and pressure of it constrict on his lungs. His father wishes he would relent, allow a champion to volunteer, someone he has faith will bring his District prestige and wealth.

Loki looks away, a tangle of vanity and defiance.

“There is no precedence for refusal. However, we appreciate this young man’s enthusiasm, and feel that recognizing his wish to participate is in keeping with the spirit of the Sixteenth Annual Hunger Games. May I present the District 1 male tribute: Loki!” Heimdall raises Loki’s hand, and he feels a swell of satisfaction that is closer to joy than he has ever known.

“Unbelievable,” the announcers will say and tutt. “I wouldn’t be surprised if next year there are some revised rules regarding volunteering. Not sure Heimdall made the right call today, but I suppose only time will tell.”

Loki and Sif are shepherded from the stage, Heimdall at their backs as the doors to town hall shut behind them, the cheering crowd locked away. They are left in silence, thick with tension.

“You will have fifteen minutes to say your farewells,” Heimdall informs them before they are escorted into separate rooms.

\--

It isn’t until Loki’s settled in on the train that he allows himself the small, private indulgence to dwell on his goodbyes. He couldn’t afford to do otherwise. From the instant he refused a volunteer, he knew he would have to be fearsome if he stood a chance at ever seeing his family again. He would have to work twice as hard to mold a persona for the crowds of the Capitol than any other District 1 tribute. Not only was he weak in appearance, he had the unfortunate lineage of being a traitor’s son.

So, he would do what he’d done as a child, when he and Thor would play at war. Wooden swords and Thor’s taunting calls echo in Loki’s mind. Loki would play the villain. Cold, unforgiving, merciless. He would be ruthless, callous, untouched by regret. He would kill brutally and smile while he did. If the Capitol wouldn’t root for him because he was their darling, he would make them root against him. Either way, they would remember his name and face.

But on the train, away from the cameras and Heimdall’s unnerving eyes, Loki finally allows himself to grieve for his family. His mother’s soft hands were frantic as they framed his face. Hers were tear-stained and painted with running makeup. Loki had never seen his beautiful, refined mother look anything but pristine. Her desperation was alarming, more so even than his father’s heavy hands on his shoulders when he told Loki to make him proud.

It wasn’t until his mother was being pulled from him by his father’s insistent “Frigga” that there was any recognition of the strong, confident woman he knew. As the doors opened, a city aid at the ready to take them away, his mother straightened. Her face was still red and her hair had long-since fallen from her elaborate twisting style. But her face fell into the easy, expressionless mask she taught him to wear.

His father’s hand on her waist, she looked Loki directly in the eyes and told him to “Teach them fear.”

Unable to comfort her, or reach out to her, he simply nodded, a cold chill running up his spine at her murderous expression.

Thor came to him next, eagerly pushing the aid aside and slamming the door in her face. He rounded on Loki, face flushed and spoke an insult with each step he took. “Foolish, stubborn, petty, immature, idiotic--”

“You already said foolish.”

“Why?” Thor asked, and the strain in his voice was almost enough to wound Loki.

“You know why.”

“You have nothing to prove to father, or anyone.” His brother, so brave, so strong, so clueless as to the true nature of humans.

“I have _everything_ to prove. They call me ‘traitor’ behind my back. I’ve heard them!”

“No one calls you traitor, brother. No one would dare disrespect a son of Odin.”

“Adopted son,” Loki seethed. His careful mask of indifference slipped into anger. Thor, alone, was capable of pushing Loki past reason and into rage with just a few words.

“He favors you most, you must see that.” Thor said it softly, the lie that Loki wished was true. So tender, gentle in his deceit.

“You are either a liar or an imbecile, _brother_ ,” Loki spat the word as a mockery of Thor’s honest use of it. “He was assigned an orphan when he was exiled from the Capitol. I’ve never been anything but a burden to him.”

“No, Loki. Don’t you see? He chose you. He left the Capitol to save you. He loves you most.”

Loki was quick on his feet. Across the room, door swung wide on yawning hinges. The city aid ‘eeped’ and shrunk back from the abrupt motion.

“Brother, please, please…” Thor held his hands palms up, beseeching. “It’s not worth dying for.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Loki called as Thor was led away.

His hands shook when he closed the door. He spent the rest of the time allotted for farewells in silence, doing his best to ignore his brother’s taunting words. In fact, he is still doing his best to ignore those haunting words as the city blurs by the train windows.

“Come,” Heimdall’s deep voice cuts through Loki’s thoughts. “Join us to watch the other Districts that have aired. We will reach the Capitol soon.”

\--

District 2 tributes are both exceedingly large, and stupid. They have that slow, lumbering gait that Loki associates with the other typical District 1 volunteers. He doesn’t even bother to learn their names. District 3, while affluent, is not known for their physicality. Being the technology and science District means that most tributes selected are small and intelligent. Loki admits to secretly hoping they win each year. He has always identified more with their cunning tactics than his own District's affinity for brute force.

This year the male is a young boy, no more than 14, with glasses and a cowlick. The female tribute is a slender girl, about 16 or 17. She’s plain, in almost every regard, except her eyes. Her eyes are angry, seething, vicious. Loki stares, transfixed at the holoscreen. He’s never seen someone look so openly contemptuous, so blatantly dislikable, besides himself.

“She’ll be one to watch, mark my word,” one of announcers say.

“If looks alone could kill, Jane Foster would already be victor,” says the other and they chortle together like a pair of old maids.

He only gets through District 4 by the time they arrive. Being the final ‘Career’ district means that both tributes are volunteers, and just as large and dumb as the tributes from 2.

Unfortunately, he has no more time to consider the competition because as soon as they arrive at the Capitol, Heimdall is leading them to the Tribute Training Center. There he’s introduced to his stylist and prep team: a strange gaggle of women who are all so plucked and tattooed and covered in feathers and makeup and rhinestones that he only manages to tolerate them for twenty minutes before he refuses to cooperate anymore.

His stylist, a tall, gangly woman with a horse-face, keeps trying to cut his hair and force him into a feather-suit.

“If you so much as touch me with those,” he points to the chrome hair scissors, “you will lose your hand.”

Finally, she throws her hands in the air and stomps away, like an overgrown child. “Never, in all my years, have I ever been so disrespected. I refuse, utterly _refuse_ to be treated like this.”

For a while he stands, naked, while the prep team huddles in a corner, and no one seems to know what to do now. Even naked, and more than a little cold, Loki manages to give them a reproachful look as one by one, they scurry away.

Heimdall finds him sometime later, draped over the prep chair, still naked, as he ruthlessly destroys each brush, fluffer, and makeup tool he can get his hands on.

“Well, that’s a first,” Heimdall chuckles and is soon followed in by a gaunt man dressed all in black. His hair is thin and tangled and large bruise-like bags under his pale eyes. He looks like a morphling addict.

“What?” Loki challenges, twirling half the broken pair of scissors around his finger.

“A tribute who refuses to participate.”

Loki huffs and rolls his eyes. “I didn’t refuse to participate. I just refused to be dressed as a ridiculous Bird of Paradise. I’m going to kill these kids, not try to mate with them.” This earns him a stilted laugh from the man next to Heimdall. “And who’s that?”

“This is Jaren. He will be your new stylist.” With that, Heimdall turns to leave, only giving Jaren a suspicious sounding ‘good luck’ before making his exit, leaving Loki alone with the morphling addict.

Loki studies him for a few minutes before he stands and addresses him. “Don’t touch the hair.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

\--

Because District 1 is so near the Capitol, they are always the first to arrive, first to a stylist, and then to spend the rest of the day waiting for the outermost districts to arrive before the parade of tributes. For Loki, this means that after he’s been cleaned, touched-up, and done a fitting, he’s returned to his escort’s custody to meet his mentor.

District 1 has no shortage of past victors to choose from. Therefore, it’s customary for each tribute to select their own mentor. Sif has been in private meetings with her mentor and prep team since the moment they arrived, leaving Loki to select a mentor alone.

In the end, it’s not a difficult decision. He selects a soft-spoken man he knows by reputation alone. Hagan is in his late twenties and was one of the victors from the early games, before volunteering was popular. He won by outsmarting the other tributes. Loki feels a certain affinity for him in that respect, and knows that he has the right clout in the Capitol to be able to _sell_ Loki to the crowds.

“What’s your angle?” Hagan asks him as he butters a roll in the grand District 1 dining room.

“Haven’t you heard,” Loki says, taking a slow slip of wine, “I’m a villain.” The small, predatory smile that spreads across his face is satisfying.

“That may not be enough.”

“Meaning?”

“Come on, you’re intelligent, so _be_ intelligent.”

“I’ll need help,” Loki answers, begrudgingly. “An ally.”

“Very astute,” Hagan praises. “Your mother will be proud.”

At the mention of his mother, his face falls. “I’ll need to know about the other tributes. Obviously Sif, and Districts 2 and 4 are off the table. I’d hoped for the older male tribute from 3.”

“What about the girl, Jane Foster?”

Loki shrugs. “If she’s useful, perhaps. I’ll need you to get me all the information you can for each of the other tributes. Tonight, if possible.”

“You’ll have a file on each by the time dinner is over.”

\--

Despite his earlier anger at the prep team, by the time he’s been combed and polished and refined, even Loki has to admit he looks better. His features are even more striking framed in black and green and gold. Jaren, while distracted and high, does at least have the skill to know how to handle him.

He’s been sewn into a thick, black leather suit adorned with straps and golden metal armor. Accents of soft green fabric weave throughout the design, offsetting the black and gold from each other. There are large gold zippers and small scale-like embellishments on the boots and cape. The whole thing is exhausting to get into, but once he is, the transformation is startling.

He looks every bit the villain. He feels powerful, and strong, in a way that he only previously associated with his adopted brothers. He imagines he looks like a Warrior King from ages past, before Panem, before civilization fell into decay, before civilization itself. Back to the time of fables, to a time of magic and wars over land, women, and Gods.

He doesn’t see Sif until they climb into their jet black chariot together. Two huge, shining black horses mounted up front. She too has been clad in gold, silver, and diamond-studded leather armor to match his. She doesn’t have a cape like he does, but her armor is skin-tight, and conforms to the swell of her breasts and curve of her hips. Loki feels a familiar twinge of attraction. He knows all too well what that armor hides and even facing the horrors of the games, he can’t help but wish for one last tryst. He’s so busy planning how he’ll get her alone tonight, he doesn’t even see Jaren approach him.

“Don’t make eye contact,” is his advice as he hands Loki the last piece of the ensemble: a golden helmet with two long, curved horns.

Loki takes the helmet, but doesn’t put it on yet. His eyes pull back to Sif. He didn’t even notice before, but there are diamonds in her hair and rubies on her temples that are reminiscent of blood. They are lucky to be District 1. Luxury items always make for more attractive costumes, unlike agriculture or coal. He has yet to see a sexy coalminer from District 12 in sixteen years of the games. And this year is no exception. The poor girl barely has enough meat on her bones to hold the pickaxe she’s carrying, and he’s certain the ample cleavage she’s sporting is a result of cosmetic alterations performed today.

He catches Sif smirking, and he realizes he’s been staring at her. She seems pleased with herself. He wonders if she knows it’s him that's responsible for the change in theme; he wonders if it would make a difference tonight.

“Feathers wouldn’t have suited you,” he says as he puts on his helmet just in time for them to lurch forward. He can barely tell, he doesn’t want to chance looking over at her as they exit, but he thinks she smiles.

When the doors open, they are greeted by the roar of hundreds of thousands of Capitol citizens, come to get a look at the children they will cheer to their deaths. As their chariot pulls them past the bleachers, all Loki sees is a blur of bright, artificial colors.

Nothing in the Capitol is natural.

\--

As requested, when he goes back to his room after dinner, there is a box of files on his bed, and all previous plans to get Sif alone tonight disappear. He knows whatever they might have shared disappeared the moment his name was called.

Instead, he spends most of the night reading about each of the other tributes. He immediately eliminates most as potential allies, though the files prove to be helpful as identifying potential weaknesses. Height, weight, IQ, physical strength, allergies, family history all give him added insight into his targets.

Because that’s all they are to him now. Not faces, not names, not people. Not girls and boys with mothers and fathers and siblings. Not a fisherman’s son or a baker’s daughter. He can’t afford to think of them like that, as _human_. Because even though he plays the villain, he knows he has no real lust for blood or killing. Before his name was called he was studying to be a perfumist. The subtly of smell, the mixing of scents, the art of attraction, that was to be his specialty. Now, he will have to familiarize himself with the subtly of strategy, the mixing of poisons, the art of killing.

Eventually he finds himself sitting on the floor, his back against the bed, with one file in each hand. By then though, the sky has grown light, and the stars have all but faded. He only gets an hour of sleep before Heimdall is dragging him out of bed.

He spends the first half of the day quietly observing. He observes Sif and her mentor. He observes the other tributes in training. He observes the gamemakers and judges. He observes the Careers. He observes the alliances that form.

But mostly, he spends his time observing the two tributes he narrowed it down to last night. The boy from 10 and the angry girl from 3. Who, as it turns out, isn’t nearly as angry as she is clever. He can see her thinking, working things out. She spends her time learning skills, gaining knowledge. But unlike the District 10 male who also seems intelligent, she then puts the skills to use. She’s efficient, a quick study, and seems to intuitively know what she’s doing. She seems to have a better knack for surviving than the boy - where that comes from, he doesn’t really know. But by lunch he’s decided that Jane Foster is the ally he needs.

\--

“I’ve been watching you,” Loki says as he slides into the bench next to her. In the bright training center lights, and after her prep team and stylist have cleaned her up since The Reaping, Loki is forced to admit that she’s not nearly as plain as he first assumed. In fact, she’s every bit as beautiful as Sif or the glamorous District 5 girl.

“Excuse me?” she asks, clearly surprised.

“In training, I’ve been watching you. You’re smart.”

“Thanks?” she seems to ask before she turns her attention back to her meal.

“I think we should team up.”

“Why?” And the hatred she manages to jam into that one syllable is impressive. Maybe he was wrong about her being excessively angry.

“Alliances often help tributes--”

“But you’re a Career, why wouldn’t you team up with the other careers?”

“Did you watch The Reapings?”

“No,” she admits, and looks down. He thinks there is something of weakness in this answer, something like shame that colors her response.

“I didn’t volunteer. My name was drawn, just like yours.”

“Someone always volunteers in 1.”

“I refused.” As he says it, her head snaps up. She searches his face, for what he doesn’t know, but he can see her _thinking_.

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“There was no precedence for it, the delegation made a ruling,” he answers honestly, but he can tell she’s already lost in her thoughts, calculating, scheming. “So, what do you think?” he asks when it becomes clear she’s not going to speak.

“About what?”

“Teaming up,” he says slowly, enunciating every syllable, as if she were an invalid.

“On one condition,” she says, all cleverness and bright eyes.

“What?” Loki asks, a tone of disinterest already taking root. What ridiculous thing could she want? His protection, some kind of promise to take care of her father, who he is well aware is unemployed.

“When you kill me, do it quickly.”

And for the first time in his life, Loki finds that he is lost for words. Not that he hadn’t considered the fact that he might have to kill his partner. In fact, that had been a large consideration when he’d decided on her. She would be easier to overpower when the time came. But never, not once, had it occurred to him that she might just _let_ him kill her.

She doesn’t cry when she asks; in fact, if anything, she looks calm, at ease. And it’s so at odds with the request, the games, that Loki is momentarily furious on her behalf.

She’s 16, only just. Yesterday was her sixteenth birthday, she grew up poor and shamed. She took the tessere every year she’s been eligible for herself and her father. He’d lost his job a few years ago because his theories on artificial regeneration of organs was thought to be ‘too ridiculous to ever yield practical results’. But Loki thought, from the file, that it was probably more to do with his unconfirmed wartime collaboration with the rebels.

She doesn’t even have a mentor. There has never been a District 3 victor, so she’s left with the old, skeleton-man escort with the wandering hands. This girl, who’s never had a thing handed to her is going to just _let_ him kill her. And it touches a part of him, that human, that empathetic piece of his soul that he didn’t know to guard against.

He understands now where her anger comes from, where her knack for surviving comes from. And it’s not right. It’s not fair that Jane Foster, whose only crime was being born in a District, has to pay the price of her father’s choices. That’s when he realizes why it makes him ache. Her father. A traitor. His father, a dark-haired man he knows nothing about except his name. Laufey.

They are both being punished for what their fathers have done.

“So,” her voice clears the haze of red from his vision. “Do we have a deal?”

“As long as that condition goes both ways.”

And she smiles, not one of those private, joyous kind of smiles that people sometimes share. This is the same leering kind of smile that he uses when he’s won. A little dangerous, almost feral.

“Deal,” she says as they shake on it.

\--

The air in the lunchroom has changed since they shook on their deal an hour ago. Loki can feel the eyes of the other tributes on them. Besides the Careers, no one makes alliances. And even then, they only last until the others are dead, and then they happily turn on each other. Having two outsiders form an alliance has never happened before.

“Should we keep it a secret?” Jane asks softly as she finishes her soup.

“No point now,” Loki says.

“Not from them,” she says and tilts her head in the direction of the other tributes. “From the cameras,” she says, all curiosity and interest.

“No. Let them know right away what we plan,” Loki says and looks away. He doesn’t say it, and neither does she, but they both silently acknowledge that it will be better for sponsorships.

After lunch they head back into training, but now with a tentative plan. Between the two of them, they’ve narrowed down the list of skills they are most likely to need in the games. Loki is not disappointed with his choice in allies. Jane proves to be every bit as intelligent and insightful as her file had suggested. Though, there was no mention of the rebellious nature she seems to have inherited.

Sometime during that first hour, Loki comes to realize it’s probably the only reason why she agreed to partner with him in the first place. When he told her he’d refused a volunteer and she looked so intrigued. It wasn’t because she was impressed he’d insisted he play the games, but because she was drawn to the idea that someone could make their _own_ rules.

She points out that in the last fifteen years, there have been a few repeat arena types, but they are unlikely to encounter any that have been seen in the past five years. So, together they go through the last five games and rule arena-types out.

Last year was a long, narrow canyon that was shaded by towering rocky cliff walls. There were frequent avalanches, and it was below freezing at night. The year before there was a tropical island, surrounded by saltwater on all sides. There was very little fresh water that year. Three years ago they were in a snowy wilderness with hardwood trees and almost no food. They had thermal outfits so no one froze to death, but they lost toes and fingers, and one girl’s whole hand to frostbite. Four years ago was a rocky landscape pocketed with caves. There were plenty of animals in the caves, but there was also poisonous gas and deep caverns. Five years ago was a lush forest with plenty of food and water. That year had been more exciting because most of the deaths came from tribute killing and not gamemakers’ design.

There hasn’t been a resource-plentiful arena since the 11th Hunger Games, and in the wake of the relatively boring games last year, where most of the tributes were killed by rock slides and freezing to death rather than actual combat, Loki feels confident with their assumption that this year’s arena should have plenty of food and water.

But, just because there will be food and water doesn’t mean that Loki knows the first thing about how to get it. Jane, too, admits that even poor in District 3, she doesn’t have the first clue how to hunt and trap or identify edible from poisonous plants.

They spend the rest of the first day and the first half of day two learning about trapping and sterilizing water, and how to tell what they can eat from what will kill them. They split up to cover more skills. Loki takes trapping and making a fire the first day while Jane takes edible plants and making a shelter.

The second day Loki takes edible insects and fishing, which he turns out to be quite good at despite never having seen a body of water large enough for fish. His nimble fingers and attention to detail make constructing fishing hooks easier than he’d anticipated. Jane starts the next day with a nod from across the room as she heads to camouflage and hammock making before lunch.

While Loki has a little extra time as lunch approaches, he takes the time to watch Jane as she constructs a hammock from some vines provided by the trainer. Her skills with knots is impressive, and at almost every turn Loki is constantly surprised with how adept she is, how skilled, how brave. She’s fearless. Even as Sif intrudes on the hammock station, Jane, with her angry eyes, manages to master the skill and keep Sif in her place.

But it isn’t until lunch is called that Loki gets his first, real taste of what the angry, rebellious girl from District 3 is really capable of.

\--

It all seems to happen so fast. One minute Jane is standing up, a vine still curled around her palm, and the next the District 4 male tribute is on her. He comes out of nowhere. Loki can barely make out him saying ‘I’m going to enjoy killing you,’ before Jane is on the ground.

Loki is up and moving as soon as it registers. But Sif grabs his arm and he turns to her, startled. He hadn’t even seen her standing between him and the scene unfolding at the hammocks.

“I hope she’s worth betraying your own District for.”

But Loki doesn’t even hear the end of her accusation because he’s already pulled away, her nails scratching red ribbons across his arm.

“Hey!” he shouts to the other boy’s hunched back.

But there’s a swift motion from Jane as she flails or kicks, he’s not sure. And then, all he can hear is the District 4 boy groaning before he keels over, off of Jane.

Loki, too stunned to move, just looks from her to the crumpled form to her left. She’s smiling, wide and bright, and he realizes she’s laughing. An errant vine still twisted around her hand, her hair splayed out over the grey training center concrete floor, and she’s laughing so hard her face flushes red.

And Loki just sort of stands there, not sure what to do. He feels like he should stop her laughing, pull her up at least. But the sound of it, the joy, the unnerving edge it starts to take makes him stand in place.

Finally, as a crowd gathers, Jane rolls over, wipes her face where tears from her laughing have trickled from the corners of her eyes, and says just loud enough for the boy and Loki to hear.

“I’m going to enjoy kill you _slowly_.” And then she’s up, still smiling and pushing past the others just as the trainers manage to break through the crowd and disperse everyone.

It had only been a glimpse, a tiny hint of it from the side of his face, but Loki was almost sure he’d seen real fear in the Career-boy’s face. Even Loki had to admit, the way she’d whispered it, almost lovingly, was terrifying.

\--

“He’s not the first bully I’ve had to deal with,” she tells him later when he asks about it at lunch.

“How’d you get him off you?”

“Easy,” she shrugged, “I punched him in the balls.”

Loki chokes on his sandwich, he’s laughing so hard.

\--

The rest of lunch is spent working out weapons training. Loki admits that he is good with knives, and can do pretty well with a staff. Those were the only two passable scores he’d ever made in the academy ‘physical education’ portion.

Neither of them are any good with brute force. And Jane tells him she can use a knife for cooking, but has never thrown one. So they decide that ranged weapons are better suited for them. They stay away from swords and mace and the other close-range weapons. Which is fine, since that’s where the Careers are anyway.

They both try bow and arrow, but aren’t any good. Jane points out that they hardly ever give ‘specialty’ weapons in a game unless one of the tributes is an expert, so they quickly abandon archery. They run through a list of other weapons and decide that the spears are their best bet.

At dinner that night, Loki is too distracted to pay attention to Hagan or Heimdall as they go on about sponsors and the latest news on the tributes. Since training is secret anyway, the Capitol crowds are still basing their opinions based on costumes and twenty-second clips.

Though, from what he’s gleaned from the conversation underway, Loki is not among the favorites. He knows he will need to get at least a 7 for his training score if he’s got any chance of getting sponsors.

So, he tunes out the dull buzzing of words and lets his thoughts drift back to today. To Jane. To her laughing. The cool, silken words she’d spoken to the block-head tribute who attacked her. There is a thrill that traces the length of his spine at the memory. An attraction he’d only ever felt as Sif undressed those few, hurried times they’d met in darkened rooms.

Jane is more than plain. He sees it now. He’s not sure why he didn’t before. She’s beautiful and fierce in a way that so few creatures are. After dinner he requests to watch footage of The Reapings, and the parade. He tells Hagan that it’s for research, to get to know more about the other tributes. But instead he locks himself away in his room and watches _her_.

She’d always been beautiful, he’s not sure how he ever thought Sif was more so. Her light brown eyes, even full of hatred, seem to shine. She has two small moles on her face, one on each cheek. The placement of them is alluring, enticing. Her shoulder-length brown hair is thick and shines, even on the day of her reaping when she pulls her hand from another girl’s in the crowd.

But really, it’s always been her eyes that draw his attention. The crisp anger there, the condescension, the smoldering rage that makes her fierce, makes her bold, makes her beautiful. It’s in the way she walks, her head held high, dry eyes. But there is something else, something in the way she moves. The fluid movement of her arms when she strides, the strength in her forearms as she holds on to her chariot.

He’d never even noticed her at the parade, though looking at the footage now, he’s not sure how he ever could have missed her. She is clearly the most attractive female tribute this year.

As far as he can tell from the footage, she is completely naked, except for tiny scales that have been painstakingly glued to her entire body. They cover her from head to toe, and each is a holoscreen. She doesn’t wear a costume, she _is_ the costume. The long blue robe is a projection. The way it moves in the wind, how it flutters and moves with the gentle bounce of her unhindered breasts is all a projection.

If he looks really closely, which he does - rewinding so he can watch the clip of her over and over (on mute), he can see the scales on her body move as she turns her head, or moves her arm. It’s only the faintest hint past the screen that envelops her. But it’s mesmerizing.

He falls into a restless sleep that night, still thinking about her skin.

\--

Loki wakes the last morning of training feeling like he hasn’t slept in weeks. He’s angry with himself for spending so much time watching footage of _her_ last night. He should have been researching the other tributes, going over sponsor strategy with Hagan, anything to give him an advantage. Instead, he spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, consumed with dreams of her, thoughts of her.

She’s getting under his skin.

He’s _letting_ her get under his skin.

He eats in silence that morning, full of dark thoughts. In a few days, he will have to kill her. In a few days, he will be the victor. In a few days, she’ll be little more than a footnote in history. And it doesn’t matter that it’s not fair. It doesn’t matter that he doesn't really want to. It doesn’t matter that the only way he could finally get some sleep last night was to masturbate, fantasizing what it would be like to touch her bare skin. None of that matters.

Staying alive is what matters. Surviving. Winning. Going home.

It’s the only thing that’s ever mattered. And some girl, just some stranger to him, some nobody District-3-girl that he didn’t even know existed a few days ago. She doesn’t matter.

He repeats this, like a chant, like a prayer. _She doesn’t matter_.

He’s almost convinced it worked by the time he heads down to training.

But as soon as he sees her, sees the ugly black eye, he knows she’ll never not matter to him. At least he can admit that now. She’s not nobody. She’s an ally, at least. She’ll never be one of the nameless tributes he will kill tomorrow. She has a name. She is his partner. And if caring about her means giving her a good death, then he will make sure he’s at least capable of doing that. Of keeping his word.

But for now, he approaches her and asks quietly, “What happened?” His voice thin and laced with barely controlled rage. His hands in tight fists.

“The Career pack has a new recruit,” she answers equally as quiet and tilts her head.

Across the room, predictably at the weapons platform, he sees the new addition. The 14-year-old from her district is thick-as-thieves with the others. It’s ridiculous to see the tiny boy valleyed between their towering backs.

Loki looks back at her, the bruise that mars her face. But before he can say anything, do anything, she lays a hand on his arm.

Before he realizes what he’s doing, he reaches up and takes her face in his hands. He gently touches two fingers to the swollen cheek just below the bruise. His eyes flick to hers for a second, then back to his fingers on her skin.

“My stylist will get rid of it,” she says quietly as Loki watches her lips. “Don’t worry about the interviews.”

“I don’t care about the fucking interviews,” Loki hisses and abruptly turns away. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.” He works to breathe evenly in through his nose, out through his mouth. An anger management technique his mother taught him. He thinks he will stomach killing the other tributes, but he might actually enjoy ending the miserable lives of the District 3 and 4 boys.

They spend the last half day in training going over as many skills as they can. They each visit a survival skill from previous days, but only long enough to ensure they have mastered the skill. Fire, shelter, trapping, hammocks, etc…

They spend the first few hours apart. But Loki keeps a close eye on her. Even as he makes one last fishing hook, he does so without ever removing his eyes from her back. She’s just finishing up camouflage.

They spend the remainder of their time retesting their weapons skills. Knives for Loki, though he holds back. Only tossing a few, purposefully missing most of his targets. Jane tries a shorter spear with some luck, and surprisingly, the crossbow. But it’s the slingshot that she seems most proficient with.

He gives her a curious look as he launches a spear at one of the dummyies, catching it in the side just as her projectile hits her dummy between the eyes.

“I used to play with my friend, Darcy, when we were younger,” she offers in answer to his unasked question.

But by the way she hits her targets and grimaces slightly when they don’t hit her mark, he know she’s more than a little good. She usually lights up when she so much as nicks the target with the spear. Not that a slingshot will do much good against a mace or a sword. But if there is one in the Cornucopia, he makes a mental note to get it for her.

They haven’t talked about the bloodbath, about what they will do when the gong sounds and they step off their platforms. Loki pushes the thought aside as the minutes to lunch and individual assessments slip by.

\--

Maybe it’s because he’s paying so much more attention to her today, but there seems to be even more grace in the way she moves. Every turn, every fire, every twist of her wrist and plant of her feet. She glides, almost as if she were floating. She is nimble and quick, efficient in her movements. There is something lithe about her frame when she moves, lyrical almost.

“Do you dance?” he asks as they sit for lunch.

“Dance?” she asks, raising her octave in question.

“Did you ever take lessons?”

“When I was younger, in school, we had some arts classes,” she admits. “I liked to dance back then.”

Loki is suddenly uncomfortable, feels like he’s stepped into a subject he shouldn’t have. A great minefield of memories and emotions he didn’t know to steer clear of. But she’s only silent for an extra beat before she turns to him, roll hanging from her mouth. “How did you know?” The words are mumbled past the bread, but he’s pretty sure that’s what she asked.

“You move like a dancer.” She doesn’t say anything, just stares at him for a long time until he begins to feel like he’s being accused of something. He fidgets under her gaze, picks at his own roll, takes a bite of vegetables. “My mother was a dancer in the Capitol before we moved to District 1.”

Thankfully, she doesn’t ask about his mother again. Loki doesn’t think he could confide in her about that, acknowledge his mother’s hands and her steady countenance and still kill Jane. There are just some things, some lines he will not allow himself to cross.

\--

Lunch is over too quickly. In almost no time at all, they are calling his name for the first individual assessment. They only briefly managed to speak about their upcoming assessments. Loki tells her he will throw knives, to which she gives him an unimpressed look.

“I’m better than I let on,” he says, suddenly defensive.

“I sure hope so,” she laughs.

“What about you, what have you been holding back on?”

Jane shrugs. “Not sure yet.” But Loki can tell by the glint she gets in her eyes that she knows exactly what she’s going to do.

They spend the last few minutes in silence, until a gravelly voice booms his name over the loudspeakers.

“Good luck,” Jane whispers as she reaches for his hand. She tangles her fingers with his for a second, giving them a gentle squeeze before she releases him.

“Don’t talk to anyone,” he warns just before he turns to walk away. The thought of leaving her alone in a room full of enemies is terrifying. He catches the Avox’s eyes where he stands in front of the automatic door.

“Watch them,” he instructs and tries his best _not_ to think about what crime he might have committed.

\--

Loki knows he only has fifteen minutes to show them what he’s capable of, so he heads to the knife station as soon as he’s in the room. Above him, the judges are still eating and drinking. The head gamemaker looks down at him and instructs him to start.

Loki takes twelve of the small throwing daggers and lines them up on an empty work table in front of him.

As he begins, the noises start to die out from above him, slowly leaving the room in silence except for the sound of his breathing and knives cutting through the air. He can feel their eyes on him, but he refuses to look. Instead he focuses on throwing. He feels the weight of each knife as he lifts it, finds the center of gravity. Calculates speed and distance, the force required to break the skin of the dummies. He throws three before the first has even hit its target.

He doesn’t stop to see if they hit their mark. He knows they have.

He is in his element. He knows how to throw knives. He can still remember his mother’s lessons, the quiet patience she had when she taught him the proper technique to use when tossing up or into the wind.

He can hear the _shink_ as they imbed in fabric and foam. By the time he gets to the sixth, he’s tired of standing still.

He swipes the knives up, three in each hand. He darts to the right and lets one fly, leaps over the table, rolls to a stop, and fires another where he knows the other is heading toward a light on the roof. The second one he throws hits the other in midair, redirecting it so they both fire apart and each hit a target on either side of the judges.

He can hear an audible gasp as both hit, but he’s already moved on. He uses one to let loose the manual level of the skeet firing machine. A single clay pigeon fires and Loki throws two more knives at just the right time and speed that they bracket the bird, twist it in midair and guide it towards a wall-mat in the martial arts training area. The bird doesn’t shatter, but its pinned to the mat, caught expertly between two blades that hold it at just the right angle to trap it but not kill it.

He stops moving and throws the last knife over his shoulder at the heart of the bird. But as he does so, he never once takes his eyes off the head gamemaker.

He smiles viciously as he hears the clay shatter.

He knows he only has a few minutes left, so he darts over to the holoprojectors and engages the ‘combat’ mode. Shadowy holo-figures immediately spring to life and merge on him. He races off, moving with expert ease through and around them. This will show them that he’s fast, that he’s smart. That even when he’s weaponless and outnumbered, he’s still better.

He makes it to the knife station just in time to grab a blade and slice into the first holo-figure. It dissolves into a waterfall of cubes after he slits its throat. He grabs a few knives in each hand and springs off again, killing as he goes. He takes out seven of them and still has two knives left. He can just make out 2 figures left and lets both knives fly simultaneously in opposite directions.

But as soon as the first holo-figure dissolves, the whorl of the panel clicks off, and Loki realizes the last figure in the back of the room isn’t made of orange lights.

He sees a flash of red fabric before one of the judges screams and the Avox in the back of the room drops.

There is no time, no time to stop it, to warn them, to react. He’s already posed, a leering smile aimed at the judges that was meant to be proud when he hears the body hit.

He knows she is already dead. He’d been aiming for kill shots.

He refuses to look. He knows he can’t, he won’t. His knife buried deep in her skull, blood pooling. It was already too late. The second the knife left his hand, she was dead.

So instead of running to the body, instead of looking at her face, Loki stands. He straightens out, brushes off his uniform, and dips his head in recognition of the gamemakers’ time.

Then he is gone. Out of the room, in the hall, headed for the elevators. He doesn’t wait to be reprimanded or dismissed. He makes it all the way to his room before the shaking overtakes his body. The door locks behind him and he runs for the bathroom. He can’t even lift the lid of the toilet to throw up, so he stumbles into the shower, fully clothed, and vomits up everything he’s got in his stomach.

Stewed vegetables and chunks of bread splatter the white tile walls. He’s not sure when, exactly, he realizes that he’s crying. Somewhere between dry heaving and turning on the shower to as hot as it will go. Huge, spasming tears that choke him.

It was an accident. He’d miscalculated. Surely, they must know that.

What will they do to him, to his family? Will they be punished for his mistake? Will his father lose his job? Will they come to take him, black hooded bag and electric sticks he’s heard about from the war, the way the Capitol would disappear whole families in the middle of the night, never to be seen again?

\--

Sometime later, he’s pulled from the bloody nightmares by a thunderous boom that shakes the floor and walls. By this time, he’s managed to shed his clothes and sits naked in the lukewarm spray of water. But immediately, he’s up, on his feet. The lights flicker a few times, plunging him into darkness for a few seconds. But then the lights come back, humming and the shower clicks off.

And despite everything that’s just happened, his first thought is of Jane.

He dresses hurriedly and runs to the hall where the elevator is. He punches the down arrow three times, though it lit up on the first. He can hear it coming down from a higher floor and waits for the doors to open. It’s only a few seconds ride to the bottom floor, and Loki has no idea what he’s going to do. He’s almost certain he won’t be allowed back in the lunchroom to see if she’s alright.

He tries to calculate how long it’s been since his session ended. It’s been more than an hour, he’s almost sure of that. He knows for sure he won’t be able to go up to the third level to see if she’s alright. Just before the doors slide open, Loki has resigned himself to going back to his floor and asking Heimdall or Hagan to check on her.

When the doors open on the ground floor, though, those thoughts evaporate.

Jane is standing there, hair blown out, face smudged with soot and dirt, and she’s got the biggest smile he’s ever seen. Not that terrible kind of smile he’s seen before. This one is real joy. He doesn’t really know what to do, so he steps back, allowing her in the elevator.

“Wh-what happened?” he asks as the doors slide shut. Neither of them press a floor button.

“I may have under-sold my engineering background.” Her smile is blinding, and Loki finds that he can’t look away. “I took a few of the station panels apart, used the explosive tips from some of the arrows, and made an _impression_.”

And that’s exactly how long it takes Loki to realize that explosion he’d been worried about her being harmed in _was_ her demonstration. And the relief is crushing. He hadn’t even realized how desperate he’d been, how anxious and scared not knowing had been, until the minute he knew she was okay, knew she was the _cause_ of it.

Loki is a tangle of anger and relief. He makes a sound that’s half groan, half growl right before he kisses her. It’s an action born of desperation. Like a sigh while slipping into a warm bath, it’s a reaction he’s helpless to stop. The need to touch her, to feel her solid form, the beat of her heart. He needs it.

He has her pushed against the curved wall of the elevator and presses into her. There’s a brief hesitation where it’s just Loki touching his lips to hers. But then his hands are on her face, and she wraps her arms around his neck. He’s not sure what he’s doing, let alone how to stop himself. And for once, he doesn’t consider the consequences. He kisses her because she’s alright, and because he’s not. And more than anything, he wants to be comforted. He needs warm arms and soft skin and the kind of distraction that can only be found in physical contact.

\--

Loki sits in his prep room, Jaren and the gaggle of painted women tutting and primping, but he barely notices them. His thoughts are still on Jane, on the Avox girl he killed.

The kiss had ended far too soon. The elevator jumped into motion, startling them apart. Good thing too, because it stops at the first floor, and Hagan greets them with a knowing smile before he instructs Loki it’s time to prepare for the interview.

Once they’re alone, Loki confesses what happened in training. How he killed the girl, how he’d just walked away. Hagan only nods; he’s already been informed. There’s already been an emergency meeting, and Loki is found without fault.

“But I killed her,” he says, voice strained.

“It was an accident. She wasn’t supposed to be in the room anyway. It was her own fault. You’re not in any trouble. If anything, it might help.”

And Loki wants to kill him. He wants to wring his neck, strangle the life from him. How can he say Loki is innocent, that it was her fault? How can any life mean so little? How can it possibly help? But before Loki can really get his face under control, Hagan puts a hand on each of his shoulders, just as Odin had done the morning of The Reaping.

“You’re a villain, remember?” The breath he’d taken to refute, to argue dies in his throat. “So, be the villain,” Hagan tell him.

That night, the scores are released and Loki tries his best not to look too surprised when he scores an 11. There’s never been a training score that high before. Sif shoot him a reproachful look as her score comes in at a poultry 8. And it almost chokes Loki to know that he only scored so well because they think him incapable of feeling. They think he’s a remorseless killer.

But hadn’t that been his plan, since the beginning? To teach them fear? To be the villain?

The other Careers all range between 8 and 10, except the boy from 3, the traitor. He scores a pitiful 6, and Loki lets out a mirthless bark of laughter before he pins Sif with the best condescending look he’s got, which is pretty good. Especially trailing in the wake of the 10 Jane received.

Hagan spends the rest of the next day preparing him for the interviews that night. Now that Loki has gone from being the consummate underdog to the Capitol favorite in less than twenty minutes, his interview is less vital than it was before.

As instructed, Loki is curt with his answers. When the host, a ridiculous woman named Moxie Devenston, asks him about his 11, he just leers at the camera and calmly informs them he is looking forward to being able to show the people of Panem just _exactly_ how he got that score.

Most of the day, actually, was spent bringing out Loki’s more subtle Capitol accent. Though he was only a toddler when he was taken from the Capitol, both Odin and Frigga still have strong accents. So growing up in District 1 left him with a mutt accent that sometimes clips and hisses, and other times it doesn’t. Hagan thinks reminding the Capitol that he’s more like them will be better for sponsorship.

“So, what’s your strategy?” Moxie asks, her vibrant green hair sparkling unnaturally, probably from District 1 diamonds. She smells like lilac and cedar, and just a hint of spring rain. And there is a second where Loki is almost sentimental for his forgotten career aspirations. “You’re an intelligent boy, I’m sure you’ve got one,” she says. At least she’s good about playing to each tributes’ strengths.

“We do,” he says and smirks.

“We?” She takes the bait.

“I have a partner.”

“Just one?” she asks, but he knows what she’s really asking. ‘Not the Career pack?’

“Well, Moxie, when you’re an 11 and your partner, a 10, is capable of destroying an entire city block in under fifteen minutes, I scarcely think anyone else is necessary. Wouldn’t you say?”

Loki watches with extreme satisfaction as her face falls. So, that answers his question about how far the explosion and power outage traveled. Far enough that most of the people in the audience probably know exactly what he’s referring to. If there’s one thing that Loki’s an expert at, it’s manipulating people. And he’s got the entire auditorium exactly where he wants them: captivated.

No one will even remember Sif’s interview by the time he’s done. He almost feels sorry for her.

“Uh, yes. Well, they sound like a force to reckoned with. I wonder if you’d give us a small hint who it is?”

Ah, there it is. That _curiosity_ , that intimate feeling like he’s giving each and every person watching exactly what they’re asking him for. “Just that she is, undoubtedly, the most beautiful tribute Panem has ever had,” he smiles because this is the moment he’s been working towards the entire interview. “Jane Foster is every bit as beautiful as she is deadly.”

The sounds of gasps and shocked ‘Oh my’s that overtake the room is loud enough that the interview has to stop long enough for Moxie to get the crowd under control before she can dismiss him.

In the hall, Loki waits to see Jane’s interview. He’s thrilled beyond measure when she is, indeed, more beautiful than ever. She smiles, even blushes when Moxie asks her about the alliance.

She is perfect. Her answers, her dress, her smile. She is nothing short of perfection. They even match, and he wonders how that’s even possible. They’ve dressed her in flowing gold and green, her hair pulled up, held in place by a black tiara that makes her look like some kind of dark princess. The green of her dress brings out the light in her eyes and Loki is overcome with lust.

The urge to undress her, one strap at a time. One zipper, one fold, one stitch at a time. He wants to take his time, and lay her bare. He wants to worship the dark queen that she is.

Jaren and Hagan must be coordinating with her stylist and escort. Or is it possible that she just knows? The thought that she is as cunning and intuitive at controlling others as he is is almost too much.

“Loki and I are eager for the games to begin.”

“Oh?” Moxie asks, on the edge of her seat.

“Then you all will be able to see how _close_ we’ve become,” Jane says, blushing again. And the allusion to sex is so obvious, Loki is stunned. Surely, she must know what she’s doing.

“Sex sells,” Jaren comments from behind Loki. He hadn’t even noticed that he wasn’t alone in the hall.

Loki doesn’t say anything, and Jaren doesn’t usher him out. So, he waits. Just a few more seconds and the interview is wrapping up. The cameras follow Jane as she exits the stage, staying on her just long enough so that when the curtain is pulled back to let her into the hall, Loki catches a glimpse of himself on the monitors.

The cameras stay on her just long enough for the curtains to fall back behind her, but by then Loki is already pulling her into a heated kiss. He’s not sure how much the crowds got to see, but by the roar he hears, it wasn’t enough. But honestly, he doesn’t care.

This, right now, this belongs to them. This isn’t about the games or the cameras. This is just an eighteen year-old boy and the girl he wants to fuck.

“Today’s my birthday,” he hums into the skin of her throat as he pulls the tiara from her hair and tosses it aside, the sound of metal hitting tile swallowed up by the moan she makes. Her hair is like silk spilling over his fingers wrapped around her neck, and the other tracing up her side.

“I didn’t get you anything,” she says, her head tilting back to meet the wall when his hand find her breasts through the fabric of her dress. He can already feel her hardened nipples.

“You,” he murmurs as he grinds his groin against her hip. He’s sure she can feel his erection through his outfit so she probably gets the point, but he says it anyway. “I want you.”

“Just what do you think you’re doing!” comes the shrill cry of a woman who sounds very far away. But there are a pair of strong hands on the back of his neck and he’s being pulled off Jane. “Now look at the mess you’ve made!” the shrill voice says from somewhere behind him, but all Loki can see is Jane with her lipstick smeared in a perfect arch from her lips to her ear and down to her neck.

And Loki’s pretty pleased with himself. It’s one thing to kiss a girl, it’s another to see such tangible evidence of how _well_ he’s kissed her. But the way her face is flushed, her chest heaves, and she licks her lips, he knows it was good. And if all that weren’t enough, there’s the way she’s looking at him. Her light brown eyes gone dark with arousal, and she smiles. It’s that same feral smile she uses when she’s being frightening.

The hand tightens on the back of his neck before he realizes he’s tried to move towards her again.

“Come on, lothario. Better let her get cleaned up before your bows,” Hagan says before he leads Loki away.

\--

Loki doesn’t even notice how loudly the crowd cheers for him and Jane when they are announced. He doesn’t notice Sif’s murderous glaring or even when the poor girl from District 12 trips and falls.

The only thing Loki sees that last night before the games on stage is Jane.

Jane’s eyes.

Jane’s moles.

Jane’s lips.

Jane’s hair.

Jane’s hands.

Jane. Jane. Jane.

In those few short moments, he forgets about the games, he forgets about his villain persona, he forgets about the crowds and all the people he will gladly kill to keep her safe. He forgets about home and family and glory.

In those few, short, terrible moments, Loki knows love.

\--

In less than 36 hours, Loki will be drenched in blood. He will know fear, he will be injured and desperate.

In less than 10 days he will be the only surviving tribute from his district, and he will be the cause of that. It will be by his design.

In less than 19 days Loki will be a victor, and he will know pain. True, cutting, unfathomable pain. Beyond what the human mind should be capable of surviving.

The memories of her, beautiful and strong and powerful. The want of her, desperate and aching. The touch of her, nails and palms on his face and neck. The taste of her, perfect in a way nothing else will ever be.

He will know ruin.

\--

_Ultimately, falling into ruin is no different than falling into love. Both are a freefall into madness that leave you exposed and raw, naked to your core. Stripped of pretense and purpose. And both are punctuated by the distinct loss of self and the devastating intimacy of pain._

\--

He couldn’t save her. He couldn’t even keep his promise to give her a painless death. In the end, he was helpless to stop the District 4 boy, Aras, as he took his time. He is ruthless, he is cruel, he is heartless in a way that Loki has only ever known how to _pretend_ to be.

He never admitted it out loud, even in those secret, private moments they shared in the arena when the whole world seemed to narrow to just the heated spaces between their bodies. But in those fleeting, dark places his mind would go when they were wrapped up in each other, he wished he could save her. He wanted to love her more, love her enough to sacrifice everything for her. But there is a part of him that knows, even then, he’s not that _good_. He’ll never be that good.

But that isn’t what torments him later in life. That isn’t what wakes him in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and her name dying on his lips. The part that he will never recover from is breaking his promise. The only thing she’d ever asked of him, and he’d failed.

\--

Years later, he will still hear her screaming, as crisp and clear as it was the morning of their 19th day in the arena. The way she begged, the pain of the arrow in his chest as he slowly bled out.

She called to him. Cried his name.

Not like she did those few times they found enough distraction and peace to allow themselves to fall into each other during the games. A tangle of limbs and skin and brazen hopefulness. Not the way she moaned his name as he moved inside her, all wonder and awe. Not that loving, tender, wistful way she said his name after he’d come but refused to let her remain so unsatisfied. His head buried between her thighs, working his jaw into a cramp just to hear her gasping, pleading, sighing voice when she comes. He has to hold her down for fear that she might fly away.

That’s not the way she says his name when she dies. As she’s being tortured to death, she screams for him. Begs endlessly. “Loki!” and “Please!” and the unintelligible screaming of pain are the only sounds in the arena that morning. That, and Loki’s labored, wet breathing.

She begs. And he thinks of how she’d begged him. How she’d sobbed into the crook of her arm as he laid her bare before him and took his time. Like Aras takes his time now. She begged him then for something she didn’t know how to ask for. She had no words to articulate the need, the want, the urgency of it. Just as she lacks the vocabulary now to ask for mercy, for peace, for death. All she could say was ‘please’.

\--

“Stop!” Loki screams, pulls against the arrow in his chest, feels the blood pooling at his back. “Stop!”

“No!” Jane screams, and Loki can’t even see what Aras is doing to her. But he knows it’s painful from the harsh, ragged way her voice cracks and she screams it over and over until her words bleed into a single sound that fuels the blind desperation in him as he breaks the arrow off in his chest.

He blacks out from the pain. He’s not sure how long. But Jane is still screaming when he regains consciousness.

He is all rage now. Just hatred and anger and retribution that keeps him moving.

Aras has her pinned to a pile of rubble that used to be a house. The earthquakes that destroyed most of the buildings two days ago have left most of the arena in ruins.

She is hardly recognizable from the girl she’d been before. Most of her skin has been peeled off, just the red muscle of her body holds her together. Her clothes have long-since been removed; the first in Aras’ bid for power was humiliation.

“Jane,” Loki calls to her. He stumbles but keeps moving. His only thought, the only thing that keeps him alive, awake, mobile is the need to stop her pain. It’s the only thing he cares about. Not winning, not surviving, not going home. Just to save her from pain. She deserves that. She deserves so much more than that, but it’s all he’s capable of giving her. And even that is a long shot.

Aras lets out a bark of laughter and saunters over to Loki. “Don’t worry,” he says as he leans in close, “you’re next.” And he smiles.

Loki is weak. He is beaten. He is a shell of the cocky boy he was when he began. When you kill a child, when you watch a thirteen year old girl bleed to death, your knife in her gut, and you’re the one that stuck it there, things like pride, things like recognition and glory are exposed for that they really are: fantasies, luxuries of the entitled, excuses from those who don’t know what real pain and loss is.

“No,” Loki says, just before he takes the broken front half of the arrow he broke off from his chest and jabs it into the soft skin and muscle of Aras’ neck, “after you.” And then he yanks the arrow forward, tearing the tendons and sinew to shreds.

Aras barely has time to look surprised before the pain blooms into a gurgle that Loki’s sure was meant to be a scream.

He drops to his knees and is dead before he hits the floor. But Loki doesn’t take the time to gloat. He doesn’t even care that Aras underestimated him. He has nothing to prove anymore. Because there is nothing but Jane.

He crawls the rest of the way to her side. “I’m sorry,” he sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He doesn’t dare touch her, for fear of the pain it might cause. “It’s over,” he says, “I’m going to stop the pain now.”

He picks up the knife that Aras had been using to slice into her and it’s so slick with her blood he can barely keep a hold of it. “Goodbye, Jane Foster,” he whispers and stabs her through the eye.

\--

When he’s twenty and has his first tribute, a seventeen year-old girl who reminds him so much of Sif, he almost has a panic attack in the training center. As he prepares her for her interview, she asks him about those last moments of his games.

“Why did you stab her?” she asks. “She was already dead.”

“I made a promise,” is all he can manage before they move on to how to appear sexually inviting without coming across as overtly sexual.

Throughout the years, in interviews, highlights in the first quarter quell of the ‘greatest hits’ of the first 25 years, often he will be asked the same thing. By then he’s 28 and has learned how to better hide the shame, the regret, the pain. By then he’s accepted that he is, irrevocably, broken.

His answer is always the same.

It isn’t until he’s in his thirties, and is a mentor for a young brunette volunteer with a small mole on her cheek and light brown eyes that he ever gives another answer.

“Why did you care?” she asks, the dull ache of disinterest seems to be the only cohesive attribute of this girl. Her apathy is holding her together.

“Because I loved her,” he says.

“Did it matter?”

And she is so like Jane in appearance, but so unlike her in temperament. She is the antithesis of Jane in all things, except the most striking. Where Jane was all passion, defiance and force of will, this girl is indifference, obedience and the ease of detachment.

“She was still alive,” he reveals and holds her gaze. “She thanked me.”

“You’re lying,” she tells him and picks at her nails.

After so many years, he’s not sure anymore if he imagined the gurgled words just before his strike ended it. But even after all these years, he has to believe it. He has to think that he made a difference, that he was able to save her in the end. Even if it was pain he was saving her from.

“When the only kindness you can show is mercy, it’s not weakness, it’s strength. Killing Jane Foster was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. And you’ll never know what you’re really made of until you’re faced with the impossible, physically and mentally. That’s why you won’t win these games. You don’t have anything to fight for.”

\--

When she dies a week and a half later, her last thoughts are of her sad, beautiful mentor. And it’s then that she knows remorse, only at the end that she sees his quiet intensity for what it is. Not a challenge, not a mask he wears for mystique, not hiding because it’s easier to _not_ care. It is self-preservation.

\--

“She was beautiful,” Loki’s mother says as they visit in the sitting room of his new house in Victors’ Village immediately following his homecoming. His home is part of a new block that’s been added since District 1’s victor pool has outgrown their available space.

“Yes,” Loki nearly chokes on his own grief. He has steadfastly refused to speak about her until now. Not even to Moxie Devenston in the post-game interviews. That pain, those memories were his alone. Cherished and protected above all else.

“It’s a precious, rare thing, love,” his mother addresses her cooling cup of tea. “A gift many in this world never know. Even in a hundred years of living some people never know love.”

“How fortunate for them,” Loki says and studies the dwindling fire in the hearth.

It’s the last time he and his mother ever speak of love.

\--

The weight of it, of loving her, destroys him. It remakes him, creates a man who is as much grief as he is regret, haunted by those few, brief moments of joy they shared for the rest of his life.

He will never recover from loving her.

He will never forgive himself for failing her.

And he will never move past losing her.

\--

“I knew Jane,” Loki addresses her father, alone on the family platform when he is in District 3 for the Victory Tour. “I consider myself lucky to have known her. Fortunate to have called her an ally.” The words on the cards blur and Loki bites the inside of his cheek to keep the tears from spilling. “She was brave,” his voice cracks and he can see huge, wailing tears run rivers down her father’s face.

A man stands next to the platform and holds his ankle. Loki knows the other man is Erik, her father’s closest friend. And the weeping girl next to him who holds so much of the same anger is Darcy. He knows this because he knew Jane. He knew Jane better than anyone, in the end. He knew her laugh, the way she looked when she was thinking. He knew her smiles, counted and catalogued them. He knew her touch, her kiss, the feel of her breasts skimming his bare chest as he rocked in and out of her.

“She was stronger than I’ll ever be. Her death is a great tragedy to this nation.” Loki can hear the replay of the final moments of the game he was forced to watch in his interviews immediately following the games. He can still hear the announcer saying ‘Today, all of Panem weeps for Jane Foster.’

“I only wish I could have--” Loki chokes on his own words as he goes off script. “I’m sorry,” he addresses her father. The rest of it falls away, the crowds, the cameras, even the Capitol. He lets it all disappear. “I loved her, and she deserved better. I wish I could have given her a different end, given her my life,” because it isn’t until that instant that he knows it’s true. Standing where he is right now, he would trade everything he has, everything he is to bring her back. “The world is a poorer place for having lost her. What life I have, I will live in honor of her.”

The announcers will say that his is the most heartbreaking eulogy in the history of the games. They will talk about the great love affair of Loki and Jane for nearly sixty years, until a new star-crossed pair will take Panem by storm.

\--

 

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank the lovely [magic-n-science](magic-n-science.tumblr.com) community for putting together this fanwork exhange. I had a blast doing this. I would also like to thank my betas, [startraveller776](startraveller776.tumblr.com) and [mauckingbird](mauckingbird.tumblr.com). Any mistakes you may find, I take full responsibility for.
> 
> And of course, this is for a gift Miya, aka [l-m-pandora](l-m-pandora.tumblr.com) who requested AU angst. I really, really hope that this lives up to your expectations. I'm really sorry if the ending seemed rushed... that's because it was. I might have been a little overly ambitious in writing an entire Hunger Games plot in just a few months. So, I sincerely apologize for the ending and hope that it is still acceptable. 
> 
> Murry Christmas!


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